Holmgren insists no big changes needed

Paul Holmgren could sit back and view his team’s nearly completed season with a profound sense of regret. He could rue his ill-fated summer bids for free agents Ryan Suter, Zach Parise and Shea Weber. He might contemplate failed attempts to retain his own free agents, Jaromir Jagr and Matt Carle.

He could wonder how good, bad or indifferent this 2012-13 Flyers team could have been without a labor war wiping out half the season, without a few key injuries serving as setbacks once that shortened season finally got under way. One that for the Flyers has evolved into the second non-playoff finish in 19 years.

“When healthy, I think we are a really good team,” Holmgren said Sunday. “Unfortunately, we were not healthy for much of the year. So you don’t want to do anything drastic. ... We just had a disappointing year.”

In the end, Holmgren’s conclusion could be that while you might shed a quick tear over this shortened season gone awry, you don’t tear up the team as a result.

Adhering to that philosophy may not be an easy task.

Flyers chairman Ed Snider, an owner that always preferred action to ponderous patience, turned 80 this year. He was 42 when his team last won an NHL championship. Snider rarely leaves a stone unturned in an effort to re-live those memories of parades, confetti and Cup kisses. There have been rebuilds and false starts and endless drama over the years. There have also been near-misses, the last coming in a Stanley Cup Finals loss to Chicago in 2010.

Three years and yet another reconstruction later, the Flyers are abutting the Eastern Conference ground floor.

“There were a lot of games where we blew points,” Holmgren said. “When you blow a game in the third period and you end up losing, you can look back and say, ‘What if?’ But we’re not looking back. We’re looking to move on.”

So over these final three games and through whatever organizational meetings lie ahead, Holmgren will ask Snider and chief executive Peter Luukko to remain patient. He could insist that the 2011 trades of franchise building blocks Mike Richards and Jeff Carter might yet yield championship results someplace other than in Los Angeles.

“With Mr. Snider and Peter, I believe we’re on the same page,” Holmgren said. “They’re not happy with the position we’re in, either. But I do believe they recognize that we have some good young players and we’re going to get better.”

After 45 games, however, Holmgren’s long-range view cannot account for the way his team has seemed to take several steps back. For example, while Wayne Simmonds and Jakub Voracek, one-half of the booty gained from the separate Carter and Richards deals, had breakout seasons, the other half of those trades, second-year players Brayden Schenn and Sean Couturier, both had disappointing campaigns.

While it’s easy for Holmgren to say injuries impacted his team — and the broken bone Scott Hartnell came up with at the start of the season certainly got things off on the wrong foot — that doesn’t explain away many of the personnel issues on the blue line and down the middle.

New captain Claude Giroux may have struggled, but Holmgren said it had much more to do with Hartnell’s foot injury than Holmgren’s inability to re-sign Jagr, their former top-line Yoda. And though his team seems to lack the presence of a physical center, Holmgren said Schenn and Couturier will both eventually fill that bill.

“They’re going to continue to grow,” Holmgren said. “Did they take a step back? I don’t know. Maybe the expectation level was higher than it should have been. They’re still kids in a men’s league.”

As for the Flyers’ perceived lack of mobility and toughness on the blue line, Holmgren cast injuries to Andrej Meszaros and Braydon Coburn as being intrinsic in that equation. Yet he said last week that he sees a shift in the league toward a more defensive style of play, one that doesn’t seem to mesh with the system taught by head coach Peter Laviolette.

“I know Lavy likes an attack style of team, and we did try at the start of the year to play a different style,” Holmgren said. “But we were missing a lot of guys who had an impact on the way we were trying to play.

“When I said that about the style of the game changing I wasn’t being critical of our coaching staff. I was just taking an overall look at the league.”

Which may or may not indicate that the head coach, who has two years left on his contract, will be invited back.

“I like Peter. I think he’s a good coach,” Holmgren said. “He’s a passionate guy. He wears his heart on his sleeve. We’re still going to sit down at the end of the year and talk. But I haven’t envisioned going down that road.”

While the scrutiny continues for the coach, where will the offseason path lead the Flyers? They will actively shop Danny Briere, but if they can’t trade him, he’ll become the club’s first compliance buyout victim at the end of June. They’re allowed to use two either this offseason or next.

Holmgren said he expects Mike Knuble to retire, and he didn’t seem hot on re-signing short-term fill-ins Adam Hall and Kent Huskins. Ruslan Fedotenko is also a longshot to re-sign, while Simon Gagne should find a way to stay.

Beyond that intrigue, there will be attempts made to upgrade the blue line. They might start with the top-10 draft pick they are likely to come out of the April 30 lottery draft with, or perhaps by shopping Matt Read, Hartnell and/or Coburn. As for the presumed option of using the second compliance buyout on Ilya Bryzgalov, that really doesn’t appear likely.

“I didn’t talk to Ilya before the trade but since then we have,” Holmgren said. “I said next year, do you have an idea of playing all 82 games? He kind of chuckled at that. I told him we need two goalies. And my belief is right now we have two good goalies.

“We have to stay patient,” Holmgren added. “At times, as an organization, we haven’t been (patient) in the past. I know these young guys are good players. They’ll come back with an attitude of wanting to get better.”